Snoop vs. Iggy: A Has-Been Plays Race Card on Up-and-Comer (video!)

Snoop Dogg, went ballistic today (Oct. 15) on up-and-coming rapper Iggy Azalea after she dared to push back against his racist taunts. So now the has-been has gone off again.

Snoop, 42, had his 15-minutes in the 1990s as part of rap’s second wave.

Over the years, rap and hip-hop got bigger, and Snoop got smaller. Nothing new about that.

He was eventually marginalized and largely forgotten, except for his occasional antics, mostly involving blatantly blowing reefer.

Now Snoop, real name Calvin Broadus, Jr. is back in the headlines in a big way for his rant against the 24-year-old Australian rapper.

Iggy scored a major breakout this summer with her hit song “Fancy,” making her one of the fastest-rising rappers in the country. Along the way, she pushed other female rappers like Nicki Minaj out of the spotlight.

Cut through all the misogynistic slurs, and Snoop’s basically complaining because Iggy is white.

Real rappers, say Nicki, for example, are black, and rap is black thing, he suggests.

This kind of reverse racism is often given a sheen of legitimacy by those who argue Azalea, real name Amethyst Kelly, is engaging in “cultural appropriation.”

For lack of a better way to put it, she’s “acting black.” After all, Iggy has a black boyfriend, too.

But anyone who makes an issue out of cultural appropriation is effectively advocating segregation. Society has already made it’s position clear on that. Separate but equal is inherently unequal.

The fact is rap music wouldn’t exist if not for white suburban kids, who buy the overwhelming majority of rap music, lining the pockets of rap artists regardless of color.

That’s a good thing. But if white kids listen to rap, then it makes sense that some white kids are going to aspire to be rappers.

After all, the all-white Beastie Boys brought rap to the mainstream in the 1980s, well before Snoop’s debut album a decade later.

Of course, no use getting all academic about it. All Snoop sees is a white “bitch” pushing back and making a fool out of his ugly, racist ass. How dare she?

Incidentally, Snoop’s got famous for beefing with another rapper on his first album. So it’s clear an old Dogg can’t learn new tricks.

Once he realizes the stir he’s caused, he’ll probably laugh it all off as a joke.

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Keith Girard is Editor and Publisher of TheImproper, New York City’s cutting edge arts, entertainment pop culture and lifestyle Web magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of Billboard magazine and a reporter for the Washington Post among other media positions.